15 (+) miles on the Erie Canal, the first two days

Holy crap. That was a long ride. 380 miles in 5 days. That’s the last time I’ll try that. I made it, but did ride in the car on Two days for about 30 miles. So, let me start at the beginning. WEDNESDAY,August 15. The rest of the drove down to Buffalo Tuesday night. Mary Ellen took me down Wednesday morning at 4:45 and I was to meet the crew at Towpath Park at 6 and talk with the press. We get there at 5:45 and we run over to MacDonald’s so I can grab some breakfast. We go back to the park. No team, no press. I give Scott a call. Change of plans, he says. we meet at Delaware Park and get a police escort to Towpath Park. Ok. We mosey up to Delaware Park. And wait. And wait. The police escort gets there before th3 team. Still know press. By the time we got going, we had 8 police cars and 7 riders. And no press. We meet the ROCovery team of 4 at Towpath Park and finally get on our way. We don’t make it 500 feet and one of the riders falls. Thankfully, it was not a bad injury. Just some scrapes and bruises. So we get on our way again. The ROCovery team has already taken off because they are really strong riders. We stop for breakfast at Tim Horton’s because our team hadn’t eaten yet. so, we finally get going again and enjoy the rid3 along the river and the Canal. The day’s getting hot. We stop often for water and munchies. One of us is lagging behind because she hasn’t ridden much before. We get to Gasport and it is decided that we will eat lunch in Albion. Meanwhile, our slow ride4 is having chest pains and the rider back with her calls medical assistance. It turns out that she’s ok, just dehydrated, so the SAG wagon picked her up and drive her to Albion. We ate a Subway there and it was very late, almost 2:30. When we took off again at about 3:15, we rode a bit of rode because otherwise we would have had to ride a little out of our way to get back to the Canal. Otherwise, I rebelled atvtaking too much road. The heat was just radiating off the pavement and made the ride miserable. There wasn’t much shade on the Canal in that area, but at least we could stop and put our feet down and stand under a tree, as opposed to standing on the side of the road. The rider who had gotten into the car started riding with us again and we slowly edged on towards Rochester. By the time we got there, we had covered 103 miles. Another rider and I sacked out at Susan’s place after ordering a good Mexican dinner. THURSDAY, August 16. We were supposed to eat breakfast up at ROCovery on Dewey, talk with the press and get a police escort to Exercise Express. There was no way I wanted to get up that early for breakfast, so I slept awhile longer, grabbed something at Susan’s and rode to Exercise Express. a lady there said the riders were just leaving Dewey Ave at 8. Of cours3 everyone showed up late with the police escort and there was still no press. We didn’t get started until about 9. We took Route 31 to Fairport and got on the Canal path there. It was a beautiful day along the Canal, but HOT. It was up in the High 80s and 90s. We stopped for lunch at a Chinese Buffet in Newark. I felt so sorry for the owners. we ate them Out of house and home. By this time, the rider who wasn’t feeling well yesterday decided to ride in the car. Today was a lot of road riding because the trail doesn’t exist here. We got onto some DIRT roads (a short cut supposedly,haha) and got a lot of hills over by Montezuma Swamp. there was no way I would have made it the rest of the way. It was already early evening and we still had miles to go. So we all ended up SAGging in with the car, but we had to take turns. Roger and I got to the motel first, so we ended up cleaning up and going to the Italian restaurant which was still open. The others eventually got in at 9:30 or there abouts. Yikes! It was a long day.